Introducing the Legal Justice Team, a new proposed set on LEGO Ideas

Following strong public support, LEGO and I compromised on a set featuring female justices. Now, it needs your vote to become reality!

Minifigure justices are back — and they’re ready for action!

One month ago, I proposed the Legal Justice League on LEGO Ideas, an incubator for fan-created LEGO sets. But the League, which featured the first four female justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, was rejected by LEGO under a nebulous “no politics” rule. Now, after strong public support and thousands of calls — via social media and a petition organized by The Broad Side — for the toy giant to allow a set celebrating women in law, LEGO and I have reached a compromise. While the historical justices will not be available, a new set featuring three generic female justices — the Legal Justice Team — has now been approved and is gathering support on LEGO Ideas. If it reaches 10,000 votes, the set will receive an official LEGO review and could be mass-produced and sold in stores worldwide.

While I was initially disappointed that LEGO would not consider highlighting four female trailblazers of American history, I can appreciate their reasoning, which was laid out for me in an email last week:

“As a children’s toy brand, we refrain from creating official LEGO minifigures that have associations with real world, present day government,” the LEGO Ideas team wrote. “Because your project features both historical and active Justices, considering it as a potential LEGO product would not be consistent with our guidelines. … We regret any disappointment caused by the project not being approved, as we can see the work and dedication that you put into it. We know you are doing this to create a project that inspires builders, and we hope you will continue to submit projects to the LEGO Ideas platform.”

After some deliberation, I decided to reach out again, asking if the team would consider the same set featuring generic justices, not made in the likeness of any real-life officials. Such a set, I reasoned, would still address my primary goals in creating the original Legal Justice League: inspiring girls and women in the legal realm and providing more diverse options for role models in the toy aisle.

I was pleased to hear back very quickly that LEGO would approve such a set were it submitted. Indeed, the LEGO Ideas team that responded encouraged me to do so and wished me well.

This new set has one year to collect 10,000 votes of support. If that happens, it can move on to an official LEGO review. So, if you would like to inspire the next generation of women in law, I hope you will support it on LEGO Ideas!

As I wrote in my last post, only 27 percent of judges worldwide are women. I truly believe more would consider aiming for such positions if they could play with toys showing that they belong in these roles. Let us make it so.